cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/16246531

I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy’s massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It’s been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let’s say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they’re what’s colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if they didn’t regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, …

As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.

I posted a comment in this thread linking to “https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs” (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren’t widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the “Be nice and civil” rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.

This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:

Definitely a trend there wouldn’t you say?

When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.

Proof:

So many of you will now probably think something like: “So what, it’s the fediverse, you can use another instance.”

The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they’re not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it’s rather pointless sitting for example in /c/linux@some.random.other.instance.world where there’s nobody to discuss anything with.

I’m not sure if there’s a solution here, but I’d like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.

    • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2219·
      2 months ago

      I wouldn’t want anyone going down an extremist pipeline on either side of the political spectrum.

      This isn’t a binary thing, there’s plenty of centrist extremists and echo chambers for them

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mlEnglish
          149·
          2 months ago

          Are you using “extremism” to mean “far from the status quo,” or “has absolute belief and violent justification for said belief?” Centrists can absolutely be the latter.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mlEnglish
              105·
              2 months ago

              The others here are using it the second way, which I agree with. Centrism meaning the “status quo” can be violently and toxically upheld.

              • ∞🏳️‍⚧️Edie [it/its, she/her, fae/faer, love/loves, null/void, des/pair, none/use name, kitty]@lemmy.mlEnglish
                62·
                2 months ago

                There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror — that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

                Taken from https://redsails.org/the-two-terrors/

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1716·
      2 months ago

      You can aleady block instances if you personally wish, is my point. Everyone knows about Lemmy.ml having Marxists. My point is that rather than trying to move communities and keep them consolidated, embrace the differences between instances and be okay with Lemmy.world and Lemmy.ml both having Linux communities, as an example.

      I don’t share your fear of Marxism and Marxists, which is why I tend to avoid Lemmy.world communities.

      • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        91·
        2 months ago

        You can block the instance, which blocks those communities, but that doesn’t block those users on them to be fair. That has to be done individually.

        Personally I am comfortable ignoring individuals (and not painting everyone on an instance with the same brush) and would prefer metas/groups/whatever you’d like to refer to them as for my subscriptions, so I’m definitely not the target user of this post.

        But just being clear, a user blocking an instance doesn’t block the users from that instance, so if that’s their goal, no, that’s not enough.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1211·
          2 months ago

          Defederation has it’s own uses, yes, but that also ironically makes it more difficult to avoid trolls. When you defederate from an instance for X reason, only the more irrational users are going to create alts to attack. Defederation is often over-used.

          • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            4·
            2 months ago

            Not advocating for defederation, I’m just pointing out that blocking an instance isn’t going to achieve their goal.

            Obviously defederation is too large scale. Ideally, there would be an option for people to block users from the instance when blocking an instance, or something like that.

            This would avoid the exact scenario you mention because it would come down to the user level, so that troll would have to put in quite a bit more effort to get around that. Unfortunately, that’s not currently an option, along with some other features I’d love to see on Lemmy.

            Again, I’m just pointing out that blocking an instance does not achieve their goal.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mlEnglish
              56·
              2 months ago

              Obviously defederation is too large scale. Ideally, there would be an option for people to block users from the instance when blocking an instance, or something like that.

              I agree with this most out of what you said. This gives users the most power to curate what they see, and lessens the likelyhood of troll accounts.

      • pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        73·
        2 months ago

        different people have different needs, for example an estonian instance would have a larger need to defederate with .ml than .world would, because of the years of soviet occupation.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mlEnglish
          89·
          2 months ago

          Sure, my point is about community replication. Defederation has its own uses, my point is that community consolidation serves very few people.